Background
Sylvanus was born on April 15, 1822 on his father John Sawyer's farm at Templeton, Massachussets, United States. His father was a lumberman and mill operator as well as a farmer.
Sylvanus was born on April 15, 1822 on his father John Sawyer's farm at Templeton, Massachussets, United States. His father was a lumberman and mill operator as well as a farmer.
Sawyer obtained a grade school education.
Sylvanus was sent to Augusta, in 1839 to work in the gunsmith shop of his brother-in-law. Poor health soon forced him to relinquish this work and return to his home at Templeton but not before he had gained sufficient knowledge of the gunsmith's art to enable him to repair and make parts for firearms for his friends and neighbors.
He also made several inventions, including a small railroad car to be operated by foot power. About 1844 he went to Boston, where he found employment for a short time in a coppersmith's shop. He then spent a year with a manufacturer of locks and house trimmings but was again compelled to return to Templeton because of his health.
He had gained a local reputation as a mechanical genius, however, and in the winter of 1845-46 was asked for his advice in the devising of tools to prepare rattan for chair caning and other purposes. After work lasting a year or more on a machine to reduce the eighteen hand operations required to prepare rattan, he felt the need of more experience and obtained employment in the machine shops of Otis Tufts in Boston.
In 1849, once more in Templeton, he constructed models of experimental machines and applied for a patent, granted on November 13, 1849, on "machinery for splitting and dressing rattan. " When practically applied the device was not satisfactory, but after two years of further experiment he secured a second patent on "machinery for cutting rattan, " June 24, 1851.
Later, the American Rattan Company was organized and a factory established at Fitchburg, Massachussets, with Sawyer as superintendent. He continued with the improvement of his rattan machinery and secured additional patents in 1854 and 1855. In 1855, when his company was consolidated with a business rival, he relinquished active connection with it to devote his attention entirely to invention. As early as 1853 he had invented certain improvements in rifled cannon and projectiles (first patented on November 13, 1855), and between 1857 and 1858 he and his brother attempted to demonstrate the practicability of their rifled cannon and projectiles, but nothing came of it.
For the succeeding twenty years he continued with a variety of inventions that yielded several patents: dividers and calipers, patented in 1867; a steam generator, 1868; and a shoe-sole machine, 1876. In 1876 he attempted to establish a watch factory in Fitchburg but was compelled by prevailing financial conditions to abandon the enterprise and to turn his attention to the manufacture of watchmakers' tools, on which he obtained a patent July 10, 1882.
In the last few years of his life he gave up all active business and devoted his efforts to horticulture, having a deep interest in progressive farming.
He died in Fitchburg, Massachussets.
Sylvanus Sawyer was the founder of American Rattan Company, he revolutionized the chair cane business, transferring it from southern India, China, and the Netherlands to the United States. For twenty years he was improving the rattan machinery, rifled cannon projectiles and received other patents on dividers and calipers in 1867, a steam-generator in 1868, a sole sewing-machine in 1876, and a centering watchmaker's lathe on July 10, 1882. He subsequently engaged in the manufacture of watchmakers' tools.
From childhood Sawyer showed great mechanical ingenuity.
Sawyer never married.
